Re: Gnome Freeze (me too!)

[Rick Macdonald <rickmacd@home.com>]

On Sat, 1 Sep 2001, Keith O'Connell wrote:

> 	...when I load the Gnome desktop into play the machine will freeze at
> the first gnome action I try (selecting an icon of the desktop or
> similar). Locks up tight. I have to Ctrl-Alt-Bkspace to get out. If I
> try to log back in a xdm it won't progress beyond accepting the
> password. To get into X again once Gnome has aborted I have to reboot!
> 
> I am currently writing this message in Netscape under Ice with the
> machine, so I fear Gnome as the culprit as everything else is fine. Why

I have the exact hang problem.

I'm running woody/sid on three machines. It only happens on an NEC laptop.
All three machines run Gnome with sawfish. The two desktops have NVidia
video. The laptop has an ATI of some sort. When the harddrive was in a
different laptop, it was OK. The probelm started when I moved the
harddrive to this newer NEC. Many things changed at the same time,
however. Video, soundcard, and a refresh of woody and or sid to get newer
versions.

X on the laptop would hang randomly when a window was closing. Happened
with windows from many different apps. If I did Ctrl-Alt-Bkspace right
away I could usually kill X but not log back in via gdm as you describe.
If I telnet in to the laptop and kill and restart sawfish, well, that
didn't fix everything and I had to quit and reboot anyway. If I pressed
keys or clicked too many times with the mouse, then Ctrl-Alt-Bkspace
wouldn't work and I'd have to hit the power switch.

I couldn't figure out if it was X, the window manager or the XServer.

I switched ice-gnome, still using gdm and gnome as usual, and it hasn't
hung up since. That doesn't necessarily prove that it is sawfish's fault.

Jon Masters <jonathan@jonmasters.org> asked about sound. That makes a bit
of sense in my case, because sound doesn't work too well on the laptop
(choppy) and I probably had sound turned on for close window events. I
guess I'll look at that.

...RickM...